Houston plans largest one day demolition of abandoned buildings

The city is preparing to demolish 185 abandoned homes Saturday, the largest one-day total in its history in an intensifying effort to crack down on dangerous and vacant properties that often play host to blight and criminal activity.

“Demolition Day,” which Mayor Annise Parker announced in her state of the city speech last month, is the culmination of months of effort by the Houston Police Department’s Neighborhood Protection Corps to find owners and encourage them to take care of their properties.

Since 2005, the city has taken down 3,909 buildings that were ordered demolished after efforts to contact the owners and urge them to make repairs were unsuccessful.

Read the full story here.

Contractor returns to site to find imitation masterpieces on perimeter hoarding.

I must admit that I have never quite seen the point of graffiti. For all the do-gooder liberal talk of self-expression and creativity, most of it appears to be the work of someone with too much time on their hands and ready access to spray paint or just plain-old vandalism.

However, having just received these photos from UK contractor Button-Linguard, we may have to review our stance on this art form.

The company had erected a hoarding around the perimeter of a site in Chesham and, as is too often the case, the hoarding began to attract graffiti artists. But what sets these artists aside is that they happed switched their usual “Kevin woz ere” and smiley faces for something far more cultured.

In fact, within a few days, the hoarding has attracted passable copies of works by Picasso, Damien Hirst, Jackson Pollock and Edvard Munch to name but a few. In fact, one anonymous artists was so proud of his depiction of an elephant complete with a 3-D trunk that he actually framed his piece for posterity.

Our thanks to Button-Linguard’s Roy Gibbons for sharing these photos.

The on-off demolition of the Bellaire Bridge will now be charged to Eric Kelly’s team.

In a curious turn of events, the on-off Bellaire Bridge demolition project at last seems closer to a satisfactory conclusion…well, satisfactory for everyone except Delta Demolition.

We reported yesterday morning that the company was in discussion with city officials and the local Coast Guard and that a demolition plan was imminent. By yesterday evening, however, the local Coast Guard was admitting that discussions had taken place but that any talk of a demolition plan was premature.

And then, just when locals thought that they’d have to stare at the rusting hulk for even longer, in comes the news that Eric Kelly and the Advanced Explosive Demolition team has actually purchased the privately-owned bridge and will start demolition work almost immediately.

Kelly says it will take two weeks to get the deck off before the implosion work begins. He will implode the West Tower first and then move to the East span.

In response to low bid prices, Demolition News launches new bid price calculator.

The issue of low bid prices is one that has troubled us since we launched Demolition News nearly two years ago. As far as we can see, these low prices are merely undermining this great industry of ours, prolonging the recession, and making it harder and harder for professional companies to compete and invest.

We have, therefore, taken it upon ourselves to produce a brand-new Bid Price Calculator to facilitate a far easier method of price compilation.

But we cannot take all the credit. In fact, the calculator has been developed using market intelligence and known bid prices from the past 18 months on both sides of the Atlantic and with the input of demolition contractors large and small.

“The Bid Price Calculator is allowing us to give something back to the demolition industry in a simple yet practical way,” says the calculator’s originator and Demolition News founder, Mark Anthony. “In today’s highly competitive and fast-paced industry, demolition professionals need to be able to calculate bid prices quickly and accurately in a way that truly reflects the demands of our post-recessionary market.”

Best of all, the Bid Price Calculator is entirely FREE.

To try it for yourselves, please just click here.

Radio Iowa reports demolition worker has been hospitalised in excavator accident.

A Fairbank man was badly hurt in a silo collapse on Thursday afternoon in northeast Iowa near the town of West Union. When Fayette County deputies arrived on the scene, they found 34-year-old Shane Rechkemmer near an excavator he had been operating.

Rechkemmer had been demolishing a free-standing silo when it collapsed and fell back onto the excavator. A co-worker helped Rechkemmer get out of the wreckage.

Read more here.

Wilkes-Barre city board irks firm with demolition bid pick.

Tammy Brennan, owner of T. Brennan Heavy Equipment, and her husband, Timothy are planning to challenge the award of a contract to demolish the former Murray Courtright complex.

The contract to demolish the blighted multi-building site was recently awarded to Stell Enterprises. But Branna insists that her company was, in fact, the low bidder, a fact that she intends to bring to the attention of a council meeting.

“There was a base bid and several alternates,” Brennan said. “Depending on which alternates are selected, we are the low bidder.” The Brennan bid came in at $921,490, while Stell’s bid was $1,015,593.

Read more here.

Despite upturns in national and global economies, bid prices remain artificially low.

I attended a meeting recently with the HSBC bank’s chief economist in the UK, Dennis Turner who set about explaining the “alphabet soup” of recession and recovery cycles. “There is the V-shaped recession in which the economy dips into the red and then immediately comes back up again. There’s the U-shaped recession where markets go down and stay down for a while before climbing back. And there’s the W-shaped recession that everyone fears at present in which we go down, come back a bit, go down again and then eventually recover,” Turner said. “But the one we should all fear the most is the L-shaped recession.”

In truth, the world has just endured a U-shaped recession. There’s no question that it was prolonged; nor can there be any argument that it was Mariana Trench deep. But, the fact is, the world’s major economies went down, stayed down for a time, and then started their slow ascent back to some degree of normality.

And yet, against this backdrop, some elements of the demolition industry – and both sides of the Atlantic are equally guilty here – seem determined to talk and bid themselves into that nightmare scenario of the L-shaped recession.

What makes this even more bizarre is that it is both self-perpetuating and almost wholly confined to one business sector.

While the other market sectors that provide an accurate snapshot of the state of the economy – notably house building and car sales – are seeing month-on-month upturns, demolition appears determined to ride the recession horse and cart long after other industries have bought a Mercedes and driven off into in search of the next boom.

Why is this?

Well, the Dutch Auction regulations that insist that the low bid (generally) wins the contract certainly don’t help, and local authorities, city officials and private companies really do need some lessons in why low cost does not necessarily equate to best value.

But more often it is the demolition contractors that are shooting themselves in the foot with a barrage of low bids that has continued long after the worst of the recession (in most areas) is over.

What I fail to understand is why. Sure, demolition contractors are not generally the top of the academic tree. But what they lack in college degrees they more than make up with a healthy dose of street smarts, guile, cunning and enviable business acumen. The industry boasts very few qualified economists and yet contractors track fuel and scrap prices with the eyes of a hawk and the intuition of a commodities trader.

So why have they failed to heed the upturn in the markets? Why have they failed to adapt their prices to reflect the growing economic optimism in the allied construction, waste and crap industries?

As a very good friend of Demolition News pointed out to us, the current economy has “a theme of innovation, productivity and added-value”.

Those demolition contractors that conform to that trend will be on the U-train headed for a long overdue recovery. Those that insist on merely slashing prices just bought themselves a one-way ticket, riding the L-train to oblivion. We can only wish them bon voyage.

Multi-angle video captures final moments of Giants’ Stadium press box.

We can go weeks without receiving details of a single great demolition video and then today, like London buses, two come along together. This latest one was shot by our old buddy Stephen SetteDucati and its shows Gramercy Wrecking literally pulling down for press box of the Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

What makes this video even more unusual is that it has been shot using a total of 10 strategically-located cameras to capture the action from every conceivable angle.

Outgoing EDA president oversees spectacular implosion in Lyon.

In just over a week, Yves Canessa’s reign as president of the European Demolition Association comes to and end as he is replaced by current vice president, Giuseppe Panseri.

But, judging by this video shot in Lyon, France yesterday, Canessa is following Jon Bon Jovi’s advice and going out in a blaze of glory.

$800 million to be earmarked for cleanup of former General Motors sites.

The Obama administration has proposed a trust fund of more than $800 million to pay for the cleanup of closed General Motors sites in 14 states.

Ed Montgomery, who leads the White House Council on Automotive Communities and Workers, said the fund would clean up nearly 90 properties shuttered in the GM bankruptcy. He said it represented the largest environmental and economic development effort for former manufacturing sites.

The cleanup plan will help raze or rehabilitate dozens of vacant manufacturing facilities and offices left barren by GM’s government-led bankruptcy last year. Montgomery announced the cleanup at a conference sponsored by the White House and the Brookings Institution, on the future of automotive communities affected by the industry’s downsizing.

Montgomery said the proposal would provide $536 million for the cleanup of properties, and about $300 million to help states and communities pay for property taxes, demolition costs, plant security and other expenses.

Read the full story here.